The Keep: Living with the Tame and the Wild on a Mountainside Farm reflects on a couple’s looping passage from disappointment and hurt to faith and healing on land they love as much as they love each other. The woman embraces farming to recover from the grief of losing a thirty-year career because of poor health; to her delight, heritage goats, hogs, and cattle claim both heart and imagination. In the forests around the farm, her husband discovers the intricacies of the natural world and enough mysteries to comfort his restless soul.

The book’s stories capture the strains of a long marriage seen through the ever-surprising events of farm life on land that eventually becomes the couple’s keep—their safe and secure place for mending wounds and rebuilding faith in the world and each other. Despite disasters and bad luck, despite intense disagreements and different desires, the couple continue to dream their future on the farm.

Their stories are about eagle attacks, cockeyed but loveable goats, intelligent hogs that steal your heart, and stunning sunsets at the end of long workdays. Disappointment, rage, and blaming mingle with the prosaic duties of farming and the grace offered by neighbors and nature.

Through the constant work and inevitable mistakes, the couple sustain their relationship with long walks, a deep appreciation for their animals, and the act of storytelling itself. The book’s essays, each written in one of their distinctively different voices, combine to frame a marriage as seen through the kaleidoscopic lens of their farm and the natural world around it.

Check out our interview hosted by Mary Catherine Froelich and sponsored by WMRA, a radio station based in Harrisonburg, VA: https://youtu.be/Z-LH2agO2to

Available for purchase